Behind the curtain

I've been involved with Four County Players in Barboursville, Virginia for years — most often as sound designer and engineer, but with significant lighting design work too, plus regular backstage and crew responsibilities. Community theater operates on exactly the constraints that sharpen technical skill: limited budgets, tight timelines, volunteer teams, and an unforgiving opening night that doesn't move for anyone.

I'm particularly drawn to sound as a storytelling medium — using audio to shape atmosphere, reinforce narrative, and create the conditions for an emotional moment to land — but lighting plays the same role through a different sense. My background in IT and systems design carries straight into the work: workflow design, signal-flow reliability, redundancy planning, and the discipline of live-show operations have more in common with running production infrastructure than people usually realize.

I've had the opportunity to mentor young artists and technicians through UVA's Teen Arts Program and Four County Players' youth productions — introducing them to the technical side of theatrical production, particularly sound design. Teaching someone to run a sound board or design a show requires you to understand the craft deeply enough to explain it clearly. It's been one of the more rewarding things I've done.

The skills I try to teach are the same ones that have served me well in systems engineering: careful preparation, clear communication, how to stay calm when something goes wrong at a bad moment, and the discipline of understanding your tools before opening night arrives.